Into the Pit (Sarenith [June] 4708 AR, day 2)

The next room contained a row of nine open coffins stretching from east to west across the north wall. Each coffin was made from a dark wood, painted black, and polished to a mirror finish. The inside of each coffin was lined with green fabric and held a ratty blanket and musty pillow. Boxes, crates, and barrels lined the south wall on either side of the simple wooden door the heroes entered from.

This barracks was the morbid sleeping quarters for the most respected members of the cult - most of whom are now dead. Seoni examined the boxes, crates, and barrels remotely using magic, which contained a variety of food supplies, such as flour, sugar, dried meat, grains, and so on. The entire room smelled sickly sweet, vaguely like a mixture of rotting vegetables and sweet taffy.

The furthest coffin on the east side of the room had a male elf in it. Seoni determined he was killed by poisoning. The body of a male human lay crumpled in front of the barrels on the southeast side of the room - Wrack determined he also died by poisoning.

Mrunk found several items of value on the body of the elf. He found a scroll of lesser restoration, a magic short sword and a gray small magic sack that appeared empty. When Mrunk reached into it he felt a small, fuzzy ball.

The next area was just part of the larger tunnel complex beyond. The tunnels were 5 feet wide and 10 feet tall. This area was separated from the larger tunnel complex by a heavy black canvas that was nailed into the ceiling and draped across the tunnel 10 feet from the door in the west wall which the heroes entered from.

The black canvas was put up to hide a rock fall trap beyond. The heroes triggered the rock trap remotely, but it warned the cultists in the tunnels of their approach.

These tunnels were carved out by hand and braced with thick planks of wood. The carved ceilings stretched to 10 feet in height and around five feet in width. The walls and floor were damp, and the sound of dripping water could be heard throughout.

Water constantly dripped from the ceiling, and a thin trickle of water run along the side of the tunnels, emptying down the sinkhole further south. The water here had no impact on combat.

A group of cultists had found themselves trapped here. After the heroes set off the rock trap, the cultists were ready and waiting for them. The cultists moved out of sight of the single torch in the northeast corner of the tunnels and waited to ambush the heroes in the northeast corner and in the south where the two tunnels reconnected. The cultists were not strategic fighters - they picked the nearest foe, got close, and attacked furiously. With no other options left to them, the cultists fought to the death.

Wrack determined that the men were starving and likely hadn't eaten in a few days. One of the cultists carried a note in his pocket:

"Baillaset,
Trusted ally, go to Oppara, find that miserable stink hole our brethren call a temple to our lord Zyphus, and instill some fear and carnage in their ranks for Bustrani's miserable failure. Tell them all that you have been sent by Zyphus, They're fools, they'll believe it. And then tell them that Zyphus wants them to trap the temple and lure their fellow cultists into accidental death. Tell them the final cultist will replace Bustrani and rebuild the temple. (The last part is true, so don't dispatch all of them.) Then spend your time watching them destroy one another, feasting on their corpses, and keeping them afraid. Use the Zyphus-granted power I instilled in you to curse every single one of them. That should make things more interesting.

Your Master,

Harvestman Quint"

The same cultist who carried the note also carried a pouch full of coins. The pouch contained 170 pp.

The tunnel ended south; a small stream of water flowed from it to the center of a chamber, where it plunged through a shadowy sinkhole. Glowing green algae coated the chamber's walls and ceilings, painting the entire room in an eerie light.

There were no traps here and nothing to challenge the heroes beyond climbing down the sinkhole. The heroes were incredibly paranoid by this point - and they should be. But this room contained no challenges other than a simple climb down the knotted rope, which Seoni botched.

The rope through the sinkhole descended 20 feet before entering a 10-foot-high chamber. This room was empty and dark, but the heroes heard voices coming from one of the three dark tunnels that exited the room to the north and west. The waterfall from the pit dropped into a small, shallow pool here and then trickled down the west and northwest tunnels.

The heroes followed the north tunnel, which wend from the bottom of the pit to the baptismal font. At several points throughout splashes of blood could easily be seen either as drag marks on the floor (Wrack determined they all headed north) or splatters on the wall.

A swinging axes trap was set here. When Aranthor activated this trap, its noise automatically warned the wight Baillaset in the baptismal font that the heroes were approaching.

Just before the baptismal font was a swinging scythe trap, as evidenced by the headless corpse beneath it. A second corpse was pinned to the east wall of the tunnel - the trap struck him, killed him, and then jammed on his body.

A stone trench about 3 feet high run the length of the west wall of the baptismal font room. Hanging above it were several human men, their chests flayed open, their blood dripping and pooling in the trench below. A thin stone tube then run from the middle of the gory container, funneling blood down toward a stone basin in the center of the room. Judging from the blood splashed around the outside of the basin, something recently crawled out of it.

This room used to be where Fel Bustrani baptized his new followers into the Zyphus faith - he used water to do so. The four cultists currently hanging above the trench were killed a while ago, so the blood was starting to thicken in the gory containers.

Baillaset, a wight, waited here. He was aware that the heroes were coming, and waited just west of the entrance to this room, ready to ambush Aranthor, who was the first through the door. Baillaset got in close and stayed there, preferring to target one hero at a time. Baillaset fought until destroyed - when destroyed, he evaporated in a bloody red mist.

Zyphus Tests (Sarenith [June] 4708 AR, days 1-2)

The heroes next found a stairwell that was the secret entrance to the deeper levels of the Zyphus cult's hideout. The entire landing at the top of the secret stairs was a camouflaged pit trap, which Wrack fell into.

The first room of the second level had a five-foot-wide, rickety rope bridge stretching from a small landing at the bottom of the secret stairwell on the south side across a twenty-foot deep pit to another small landing on the north side. The north landing had a solid wood door leading north and the south landing had the secret stairwell leading up to the west.

This room represented the first test for new Zyphus recruits. A new recruit had to cheat death by crossing the rope bridge before a poltergeist triggered the bridge collapse and either crushed the new recruit's skull with a rock or hurled him to death against one of the walls. Hustavan knew about this room (having once passed the test) but he believed the poltergeist was actually Zyphus himself. When asked how they normally got through this room, he said, "Once you figure it out, you just get through here as quickly as possible. Lots of cultists die here even after they're part of the cult."

The poltergeist here used its telekinesis ability with annoying results. The bridge was rigged to collapse - something the poltergeist knew how to rig but didn't get a chance to.

The poltergeist spent most of the combat flying above the bridge throwing 25-pound rocks at the heroes. When Mrunk crossed the bridge he was targeted with telekinesis as the poltergeist pushed him in the pit. Once Mrunk was in the pit, the poltergeist resumed throwing rocks at the heroes. The poltergeist's only accessible rocks heavy enough to do damage to the heroes were in a single pile near three corpses in the pit. The poltergeist had to swoop down to pick one up and the heroes could spot him picking up a rock. He fought until destroyed.

There were three dead cultists in the pit - 2 human males and a female half-elf. Mrunk examined the bodies and found that both males were killed by massive internal injuries, probably from falling. When he examined the half-elf he found dozens of tiny bites all across her body which suggested that she probably died of some kind of poison.  None of the cultists possessed anything of value.

The next room had four evenly spaced canvas walls in the middle, running parallel to each other in a row stretching from north to south. On both sides of each wall hung dozens of paintings, drawings, and sketches of a variety of violently-themed scenes. The heroes walked in through a solid wooden door in the middle of the south wall and a heavier, oaken door was in the middle of the north wall.

This gallery was where Fel Bustrani kept his collection of tragedy- and accident-themed art. The works each depicted some horrible event - the tragic death of a child hit by a wagon, a building collapse killing dozens of workers, and so on. The largest painting, on the far left canvas wall, depicted the interior of a large, elegantly appointed opera house where rotting undead fed on the living. Mrunk, Seoni and Wrack instantly recognized the opera house as the House of the Immortal Son.

A mechanical fire trap was set in the ceiling just above the north door. When Wrack stepped onto the square in front of the door he triggered the trap and it exploded toward the south side of the room in a 15-foot cone, setting the gallery on fire and almost killing Hustavan. The part of the gallery in the area of effect burned immediately; the fire then spread slowly until the heroes put it out. The oaken door in the north wall had been heavily treated with fire-resistant residue and did not burn during the fire.

Nine of the twelve paintings were lost in the fire. Aranthor needed to recover the painting of Panmagistros Taticus Petros the Spear-Bearer of Zimar intact and undamaged. The difficulty was that the painting was on the second canvas wall from the east and was hung directly in the path of the mechanical fire trap. When the trap was activated, the painting went up in flames.

The next room was split in half by a half-moon shaped cliff. The lower side, along the south wall, was twenty feet below the higher side on the north wall. The cliff was rather smooth, seemingly absent of handholds or any easy way to climb it. The heroes entered through a solid, oaken door to the south, and two simple wooden doors led out to the north and east. The room smelled vaguely like cooked meat.

This room represented the second test for new Zyphus recruits, a test of their persistence. The rock wall was incredibly difficult to climb and most recruits spent hours trying trying to scale the 20-foot-cliff, if only to avoid having to quit and walk back out through the first Zyphus test. Mrunk found a hidden set of handholds tucked back into a natural crease that run up the rock wall in the middle.

There was a nasty tripped trap, firing spikes from inside the hidden handholds in the natural crease. There were a dozen or so spikes embedded in the heavy oak door and the south wall as well as a dozen spikes imbedded in the corpse of a human female lying against the base of the cliff. There was also a tripped boiling oil trap that was the source of the room's smell. Two deformed and burned bodies lay against the eastern door in a puddle of congealed oil. None of the bodies possessed anything of value.